Happy Birthday Grandma, We miss you!!!

Do you believe it's the last day of July today?? Time flies when I have time off for the summer.
 Today would have been grandma's 80th birthday, so happy birthday dear Mary Jo, we miss you dearly and think of you everyday!

This layout was done for Sketchy Thursdays sketch. Katie and her best friend had to wear ugly sweaters for a party and Katie asked me if I had any Christmas, teacher sweaters. Hey, I think that was an insult!!!

Thanks Amanda!

I'm learning how to put my own header on my blog thanks to a nice friend..... it's a little blurry, but it'll do for now. The hard part is sizing the photo so it fits. I've been scrapbooking a lot this week. Here's a few of the latest.

March Proud

I remember the first day of school when Allison came home crying because she hated marching band, but we made her stick with it for the week. Funny now that her dream is to go to a college with a huge marching band and she wants to go back to school just so she can start marching!! Funny girl!

Missing You Grandma....

This was a layout about last summer, but I realized it was grandma's last summer with the girls, so I just couldn't do the journaling. I used a Sketchy Thursday Challenge sketch.

Summer Layouts

I did these for the Sassy Lil' Sketches challenge this week. I really love this new Bazzill Two Scoops paper with patterns on it.

Who Knew??

I never knew you could alter popular signs online. What a cool idea. Here is my double page layout that I used my new trick. You can too! I love layouts with a lot of photos, and this one had fifteen photos.

Monochromatic... people do that?

This Big Picture Scrapping class is really stretching my creativity. I love color, so I don't really do one color pages. This was fun though since I had so many paint swatches sitting around, and wondering what I could use them for. Here's my take on this challenge:

Starting the Book of Me

Hope and I are hosting the BOM challenges once again on the CK message board. If you're reading this, come and join in, we welcome new scrapbookers! Here's my first layout, inspired by the Oprah magazine.

Signs of summer

I did this layout for the Sketchy Thursday sketch challenge this week. I was playing around with my new lens to get some closeups of summer fruit and I like how this one came out. I love the 100 Days of Summer scrap kit too.
                                                    

Perfect for Me!

I got up early this morning so I could go get some errands done, then do the CK one hour challenge. It ended up being a challenge to use pink! Really? What luck!! Here's my page, thanks CK!

Being in school (as a student) is HARD!!

Going to school this week for a Writer's Workshop class and oh my goodness, it's so hard to get up early again. The hardest part is not going to bed earlier since it's summer, but that alarm clock goes off at 6! It's a good class and I'm learning a lot, BUT I still need my summer! The best thing is the first night's homework assignment was to decorate my Writing Notebook and read some chapters. Guess which assignment I loved? Here it is

Hybrid Scrapping, Me??

Hmmm, not so sure about digital scrapping for me. Playing with Picasa today for the BPS challenge and it is fun, and I'm learning a lot. I like the way you can put words on photos, then print. I'm a papergirl though, so don't worry.

Brady Bunch Minus the Maid!

I'm taking a class at Big Picture Scrapbooking this summer, and this is the layout for my first challenge. My family was just like the Brady Bunch, three boys and three girls. I am the youngest. I"ve always wanted to do this layout, and this gave me the perfect opportunity. I rewrote parts of the theme song for the journaling.

Happy Birthday Dear Brother!!

I know everyone is in Big Bear celebrating your big day, but I just couldn't make it this time. I'm thinking of you and wishing I was there, we had such a great time when we spent the week with you! Hope your birthday is fabulous, and I did a layout in your honor. You are the best, but when did you get so OLD????

Don't tell Larry and Tom I put my "favorite" brother in there though!!!

Got to meet another MB friend!

Today was such a fun day, an online scrapbook friend  is here from Washington and we decided to meet for lunch and then go  scrap shopping at Green Tangerines, a local scrapbook store. We had such a great time. My youngest daughter came and was our photographer. My niece Jodi also came with us!

We ended the day at Icing on the Cupcake

and here's what I bought. I'm officially on a spending freeze from any scrap shopping now until school starts!

Use product packaging challenge.....

I used the box from a word I bought for the scraproom. Here's the box

and here's the layout

Today my daughter helped her friend make a tshirt for the American Idol concert. She loves Scotty and the song, I Love You This Big, so she put it on the shirt. (She also likes Oprah) Good job Allie!

Here's a canvas I got for the scraproom for a great deal of $15 bucks!!

Happy Fourth of July Everyone!

We are going to have a houseful of teenagers, which I love when my daughters' friends come over! I'll post some photos later. This is a welcome board I painted many years ago, check out the date!!

My First Sketchy Thursday layout

One of my new favorite sites is Sketchy Thursday. I love their ideas and sketches. Here is this week's sketch




and here is my layout

I'm Back....

We went on vacation to the beautiful Napa Valley wine country. It is so relaxing there, but it did rain hard one day, so we just relaxed and read books. Here are a couple of layouts I did before I left.

I also added a couple of things to my scrap room. I just love this quote on canvas I found at Kohl's. Then I made new boxes for my photos. The last thing is how I am organizing my Cricut booklets.

Here is my wire rack I bought at Home Goods with all of my punches in it.

Most of you know that my dad is in an assisted living facility due to his dementia. It has been a heartbreaking journey for me. Well, I found this letter that he had written to me and mailed to my home before he got really bad. (The good part of cleaning!) I will keep it forever!

He was never the one to show emotion or tell you his feelings, that was always my mom's job, so this really is special.